A Cursed Embrace(7)

Aric opened the Escalade’s passenger door for me. The tan leather seat chilled my bare legs. Although I didn’t react, Aric immediately started the engine and flicked on the seat warmer. He took me to the closest diner. The patrons ceased their conversation as we entered. Aric’s commanding presence made them take notice. They settled and resumed their meals once we took our seats. I flipped through the menu. The gore slathered across my front porch had initially erased my appetite. Except the scents of frying bacon and pouring pancake batter quickly proclaimed festering body parts be damned. So I didn’t complain when Aric ordered enough food to feed a small village . . . or a wolf and a tigress.

“I flew in from Colorado last night.”

“Oh?” I sipped on my orange juice. “What’s there?” Besides the countless droves of weresluts you’ve bedded?

Aric smirked. While he couldn’t read my thoughts, my tone probably screamed, Caution: bitchy Latina ahead.

“My mother, Celia.” He glanced out the wide diner windows with a panoramic view of Lake Tahoe. The breeze had picked up, sending a ripple of blue waves to splash against the sandy shore. “It’s where I grew up. Where I used to find my peace.”

I finished the last bit of my biscuits and gravy and moved on to the eggs. I could relate to what Aric meant. The mysticism of the lake welcomed us like humans never had. I knew my sisters and I had found our home when we visited the area.

I stopped playing with my eggs and met Aric’s gaze when he said nothing more. “What did you need peace from?”

“Here. This situation between us.”

Sadness filled my lungs like water and drowned my hopes. I thought he was saying good-bye. So his next words surprised me. “Have you been seeing that moron, Celia?”

“Huh?”

Aric leaned back in his seat. “The vampire. Have you spent time with . . .” Aric swallowed hard, barely able to spit the name out. “Misha.”

I stared at my eggs as if they would somehow give me a clue how to answer. How could I tell Aric that the first time Misha called, I’d scrambled to my phone, expecting it to be him? And when it wasn’t, how it made me long for Aric’s call more?

Unlike Aric, Misha had called me, every day, sometimes more than once. At first our conversations revolved around our near-death experience on the night of the fire, when we’d taken on a master vampire, his army of ravenous, bloodsucking monsters, and, oh yeah, his psycho gal pal witch. I’d saved Misha’s life. And I’d inadvertently returned his soul. And although my sisters and I first became involved with him to help clear him of a crime, somewhere along the way he’d become a friend—a self-absorbed, often arrogant, flirtatious, O-positive-worshipping friend, but a friend nonetheless. And one I felt protective of just then. Misha wasn’t perfect, except he also wasn’t as awful as the wolves liked to believe.

I looked up from my eggs. “I don’t want to discuss Misha with you.”

The truth of my words hit Aric hard. He raised his chin and tightened his jaw. The waitress bustled over and dropped off the check. I reached to pay my share. Aric lifted it away. “At least allow me this.”

Aric reached for my hand upon catching my crinkled brow. “I’m sorry. I just thought . . .” He sighed. “A few dead males have been discovered scattered around the area,” he whispered, out of the range of human hearing.

My tigress sat up in attention—unsure why Aric had changed gears and itching to protect me from the latest evil threat. “Are they leftover food from the vampires infected with bloodlust?”

Aric’s thumb teased the center of my palm. “That’s what I thought at first. However, they weren’t in the same condition as the others. And they were also all male—human males. Not a female in sight.”

I took a chance and laid my other hand on top of his—a brave move on my part. I was never this forward. My curved fingers stroked between the ridges of his knuckles. “What do the victims being male have to do with anything?”

Aric watched my movements, surprised, I supposed, that I’d returned his affection. “The infected vampires didn’t discriminate—male, female, human, were—it didn’t matter. Something else killed these men.”

Great. Another hungry killer. Just what Tahoe needed. I opened my mouth, just to shut it again, remembering Taran’s dreams. My sister possessed the unique gift to generate and manipulate fire and lightning as a weapon. She could also alter memories to some extent. And while she couldn’t predict the future, she did have the ability to sense different types of magic—were, vampire, and witch. Could she have also sensed something darker? “Aric, could this have anything to do with demons?” Aric’s hard stare told me something I didn’t really want to know. I rubbed his knuckles harder. “This is the part where you accuse me of being ridiculous.”